Feeding A Baby From Day One

Feeding a baby was sort of the last thing on my mind in preparing to be a mother. I was ready for sleep challenges, for crying… I was completely unaware of the extent of challenges we could face in just getting this baby fed, if I’m being honest!

Because I had a couple of breast surgeries (one reduction, lift and augmentation at age 23 and one explant at age 35 - see here for more info on this), I was prepared to have some trouble breastfeeding. I knew there was a possibility that I wouldn’t be able to. And all things considered, I’d say I did a bit better than I expected to. However, we faced numerous challenges getting Hugo fed comfortably. Here is how it all went down for us.

Hugo was born a healthy weight of 7lb 9 oz. I found breastfeeding challenging for the first few days, as most new moms do. I certainly couldn’t tell how much milk he was getting. When the midwives weighed him on day 4, he had lost 10% of his weight. This, too, can be common, but the midwives do want to be cautious. If the baby gets to a 10% or greater loss, they may recommend supplementing with 30ml of formula at each feed, and this is what we were recommended to do.

Within a few days, his weight was coming back up very well, and so we were advised by a different midwife that we could then remove the formula again and carry on. Well, in came a confusing event. I remember distinctly on day 8, I began to cut back his formula. I also had a few slices of pizza for dinner. This is relevant because to this day I’m not sure if it was the cheese, the tomato sauce, or the drop in calories that caused this - but Hugo ended up hysterical for most of day 9. He wailed and wailed, broke out in full-body rash, and barely slept. For a newborn, this was alarming. The rash kept spreading and finally around 6pm we decided we didn’t want to chance anything and went to emergency.

For brevity’s sake, I’ll skip some of the details of this horrible emergency experience. In short, we were turned away everywhere and told to get to Sick Kids. Guillermo couldn’t come in with us - I had to be the one despite having a minor panic attack, because I had the only means with which to feed Hugo (my breasts). We were put in a hot room. I didn’t have any diapers, and neither did they. The nurse was harsh with me when I asked for one, saying they did not provide them. Nor did they provide water to drink, not even to breastfeeding new mothers. I stayed in this room from 8pm to 5:30 am, Hugo screaming. He had to have a catheter put in for testing, more screaming. We went from roasting hot to freezing cold, no blankets. We were checked on about once every 1.5 hours. Just another little story for the pandemic experience, I guess. The result of this visit was “We don’t know what the rash is from. Go home and monitor it.”

I kind of had to tap into my gut, and I wondered if Hugo had gone into a panic from the drop in calories when we removed the formula. I worried that he wasn’t getting enough milk from me. I decided we’d move from a syringe of formula to bottles, and continue to supplement every feed. I wasn’t taking any more chances. I also worried that he had CMPA (cow’s milk protein allergy). He did continuously react, in the form of gas and stomach pain when I would consume dairy, so I wrote it off pretty early. If you’ve ever experienced an innocent baby in pain, you know you no longer want to take ANY chances of providing something that could be the cause of that pain.

Next we entered many months of horrible gas pains, colic (an umbrella term for what is basically unexplained excessive crying, see my other post here on that experience), green feces (a sign of allergy) and my agony in trying to pinpoint the causes of the problems. We bounced around trying different formulas - from cow’s milk then to soy (NOPE!), then to a goat milk European formula. Hugo was slowly rejecting breastfeeding during the day, and preferring bottles ever since that hospital visit. This resulted in me pumping 3x / day or more, to try to derive as much milk as possible for his bottle feeds. I wanted Hugo to consume mostly breastmilk, but I could never quite produce enough, probably because both of us fell back on the formula out of fear too early on. Maybe I could have produced more if we had stuck it out a few more days, but after the rash breakout I was just too afraid to risk him not getting enough.

So, we ended up doing a combination of: accepting donated breast milk from other mothers who overproduced, an organic goat milk formula, and as much of my own pumped milk as I could muster. And the word “muster” is probably an understatement for the aggression I applied to this task. I was constantly chasing his appetite.

I ate the milk-production cookies, I got a tincture from my naturopath, I eventually went on Domperidone at the max dose (9 pills / day) just to make enough. The pills did finally work, or perhaps a combination of the cookies, drinks and pills - to this day, I have no idea. Something was increasing my production, and I didn’t want to risk it dropping so I just kept doing all of the things. Ummm, it sucked. That feeling — that pressure. If I had a low pump session, it would put me in such a bad mood. If I had a higher pump session, I would feel so proud. I was constantly evaluating what I was eating, what I might be doing wrong or right. It’s ridiculous, as I’m revisiting it all! And sure, I would have just put Hugo on all formula had his stomach been able to manage it. But he would spit up more, have more discomfort and constipation when we did.

Guillermo just walked in as I’m writing this and asked why I look so stressed - haha.

Here we are now at 9 months. A little over a month ago, I stopped pumping. I weaned off the pills, stopped eating the damn cookies and my milk production came down to a halt. With tremendous gratitude, we continue to collect donated milk from overproducing mothers, and Hugo’s bottles are about half donated milk and half formula now. Only 3 more months to go, and this wild journey will be over.

I wanted to share this rather complicated experience because breastfeeding, or FEEDING, no matter what route you choose can be incredibly hard. It can be overwhelmingly stressful. And that stress, especially as I look back on it now, can be very toxic and such a spoil to what is in so many ways one of the most beautiful experiences of life. Growing with, and growing a new baby.

Nothing is as simple as it seemed ahead of having a baby. None of it. But, and I really do mean this, the highs are the highest I’ve ever felt and the feeling of being a mother outweighs anything I imagined life had in store for me. Through my fatigue, I am grateful for this every day.